Ginty

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I have only just found this community - wish I'd been able to participate earlier. Despite not being as gorgeous or popular as Ginty at school, I always had some sympathy for her. Does anyone agree with me that perhaps things will work out OK for her, despite her certainly very questionable behaviour in Attic Term? After all, she is only fifteen although I can understand Patrick being upset ( even if he doesn't mind the ultimate consequences) as she does lie, if only by omission. Sometimes I do think that AF has it in for her for being a conventionally feminine teenager - I'm pretty sure she is about the only Marlow would wouldn't be considered slightly odd at the schools I went to - but perhaps sheer Marlow confidence and force of personality would carry them through...

Also, does anyone have any comments on her name? I've heard of Ginty and McGinty as a surname (I think usually Irish or Scottish) but not as a short form of Virginia, which I think Is usually Ginny. Nevertheless, I guess it fits with the general gender ambiguity of Marlow female names (Nick, Lawrie, Rowan, even Kay used for a man in Malory, although less often subsequently, I think) If she's not stuck being called Ann, maybe she's redeemable (actually I think Ann's a perfectly reasonable name, but it doesn't seem that cool in Marlow terms.)

Comments

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I don’t like Ginty much, although I agree that she is very recognisable, and would certainly be popular in most school environments (as indeed she is at Kingscote). Whereas it is harder to think of people like Nicola and Lawrie being typical/popular adolescents.

But I think one of the attractions of the Marlowverse is precisely that certain people who would – as you say – be considered rather odd in most schools, are actually able to flourish/be leaders – even seen as rather cool. I think Nicola would be dismissed as a nerdy tomboy at many schools – so that’s why it’s nice, if you are an adolescent girl who isn’t that into the girly stuff, to read about this world where Someone Like You is completely accepted and even centre stage. (Not that I was ever any good at netball or cricket, or remotely interested in Nelson, but I was a passionate reader -I enjoyed Mary Renault and Dorothy Sayers!- interested in history, and not interested in fashion at all, which all seemed fairly freaky among my contemporaries.)

By contrast, Ginty is all too obviously one of the trendy in-crowd, these days sitting about reading celebrity mags, but who would still get into a good university because she had the good fortune to go to the kind of expensive school that would guarantee it for her. I think she is also an example of someone cursed by their own beauty. It makes life too easy for her – especially as she is intelligent enough to get by in most company conversationally – and because of this her own growth as a person is stunted.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

There was a Marshal of France called Anne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_de_Montmorency), if that's any help to you. :)

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I believe each of the Marlows has a Besetting Sin (except in the case of Ann, who has a Besetting Virtue, which comes to much the same thing) and it will always bob up, and the triumph of the tragedy of their adult life will come in how they choose to deal with it. First, of course, they have to recognise that the BS exists and is their's, and then they have to decide what to do now they have reached that recognition. For Ginty, the desire to be loved/liked without question by all onlookers at present trumps everything else. Her moral courage fails because she fears that to admit to a fault will prevent anyone else admiring her, and in Patrick's case becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If she wants things to work out OK for her she needs to become happy within herself, and not be so sensitive to how she may be reflecting in the eyes of others (which is why she is identified with "the onion looking-glass lady").

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Without wishing to be unduly catty, I'd say it depends entirely on who she marries. I'm sure she's going to marry someone, and I'm sure it's not going to be Patrick. But given a nice husband, either besotted with her or at least entirely faithful, who'll tell her he loves her at least sometimes and who has enough money to keep her out of a full-time job and keep her horse in hay, she'll do fine.

If her husband's not as above, she'll be divorced, possibly more than once, possibly childless, and probably living somewhere fairly pokey in Birmingham - unless she has the sense to go home to Trennels.

I really don't see her as a career girl.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Thank-you for your opinion, but I must say I am surprised that you don't see Ginty as being up to having a career at all. Surely she shows reasonable imagination and intelligence in Peter's Room, and in Attic Term expresses her desire to possibly go to Oxford, although she also believes that getting expelled will seriously damage her chances. I could see her in something like fashion or society journalism, maybe acting or modeling. I agree that she can be self-absorbed, but being doomed to the luck of a besotted husband or a pokey flat in Birmimgham seems a little harsh.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just me being prejudiced, though I must say smellingbottle's comment below puts my thoughts into words much better than I did. (Thanks!) I can see her keeping a job, but I don't see her in anything high-flying enough to be called a career.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I don't see Ginty as a very likely merchant banker either, but fail to see why she should be condemned for this . Do you see Rowan necessarily doing a high-flying career? Karen? Ann? Patrick? AF herself? It seems that only Ginty is in trouble for this, and I wonder if it is to do with her being seen as the most stereotypically feminine sister. Personally I have trouble with this, although I know, from the letter published The Marlows and their Maker, that AF appears to have been opposed to feminism. On the other hand, I remember her stating in her introduction to the Girls Gone By editions that Ginty will make a good marriage, although not to who. This does at least seem to rule out the poky flat in Birmingham, so I say good luck to her.
i

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that many people's responses to Ginty are in terms of her perceived popularity and being one of the crowd. While it's true that she is introduced in Autumn Term in specifically those terms, we do also get to see quite a bit of a more solitary Ginty, who panicks when left alone and grabs onto the nearest person in sight - witness the Unity Logan debacle, and, arguably, even the phoning in Attic Term happens because Monica is absent again, and Ginty at a loose end, having to be partners with the 'lumpish flatfoot Norah Greengrrass' and tag along with a gang to whom she is no longer integral. She seems to absolutely require Monica's presence to function, and she seems to take on the colouring of whoever she's curently most attached to - whether it's Monica, who seems to anchor her during school, or showing off by pretending an interest in Patrick's taste in books during the holidays. Any kind of upset throws her completely off-balance, and she performs disastrously at sports etc. She seems more like someone trying on charm and the glamour of popularity, than someone secure within the role of Popular Girl. She can't get Patrick to love her as she wants, and she flutters off from him when things get difficult because of her own actions. She doesn't handle either school staff or parents well. Lawrie wants to Gondal because it lets her act, but Ginty seems to need it quite pathologically, enough to over-ride her party-dress vanity.

She seems to me a far frailer character than the image I often get from people's responses to her, despite her tendency to manipulate, which doesn't always come off. In terms of an afterlife, I tend to see her as increasingly petulant because life hasn't turned out as promisingly as she'd confidently expected.

I once met a Virginia known as Ginty by her immediate family - she was about sixty, and was a posh Cotswold matron who rode.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Did you ask her maiden name? Maybe that was her!

Don't you think lots of popular, part of the in-crowd people are probably fragile underneath? They are dependent on a social setting/social approval and so get a bit desperate when it is taken away?

Or is that just something non-trendy out-crowd types comfort themselves by imagining?

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

What a thought - this Ginty was a caricature Home Counties Tory wife, all Alice band-and-wellies, Daily Telegraph attitudes and and horsy snorts.

Probably re. the fragility of popular people - but as I'm probably reverting to my schooldays for context here, don't listen to me. I was the one skulking in the back row, listening to the Smiths and hating everyone in sight. We turn out more entertainingly in the long run.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are right that she has a pretty high dependency on outside approval - but I see this as pretty true of the rest of the younger Marlows as well - Lawrie seems to need Tim and Nicola Miranda, and I think they would both feel vulnerable if they were not in the "in" group. I know Nicola is suppost to have a basically strong personality, but I never remember feeling that she would be confident as "the cat that walks by himself" as Patrick seems to be.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Maybe I am slightly sympathetic to Ginty because, flawed as she is, I don't think you ever see anything quite so bad from her as the treatment of Marie Dobson. I am still shocked when Nicola says in Cricket Term that she doesn't think she is "enough" of a person to die. I don't know if she thinks that you have to be a Marlow or a Merrick. Neither does she change her friends according to how she currently feels about their hair as Miranda apparently does before Nicola. Actually I'm not quite sure about what you mean in that she can't deal with the staff either - I think she does quite well with Miss Keith to get off with an order mark, the same as Nicola, in Attic Term. Obviously this is not quite fair on Nicola, but it seems to me that it is she who has difficulty, however understandably, with Miss Keith.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I wonder if AF would have had the nerve to write a story from the point of view of Marie Dobson or Pomona - maybe someone should try it.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of things like her mishandling of the childless Mrs Lambert situation, or even the way we see her asking Miss Ferguson for a requester to give Mrs Lambert, and that brisk little lecture from Miss F about how Ginty will have to deal in later life with people who aren't going to necessarily treat her with charm and courtesy etc etc. Added together with the fact that she's the Marlow who consistently deals in low-level aggro with her mother - various bits of teenage sulks and strops - and that scene in Falconer's Lure where she comes over all anti-blood sports (in a way completely inimical to the rest of the huntin'/hawkin' etc Marlows) with Cousin Jon, she just seems at times quite unsure in her dealings with adults, and mishandles or misjudges things. Adults are presumably less immediately taken by her looks and charm than are her equals in age. (I don't know where that leaves her in terms of being favoured by Madame Orly - perhaps she is the most chic of the Marlow girls and so of interest to an adoptive Parisian?)

I quite agree about her faithfulness to Monica showing up well against Miranda's friend-hopping, though I think we have to read Nick's remark on Marie in the context of her realisation, at other moments, that Marie has feelings, even if she's a grubby wet drip etc. I mean, I think the reader is urged to see beyond Nick's own self-involvement and judgementalism.

Though AF seems to intend us to take very seriously as moral failings in Ginty the fact that Patrick at least fears Ginty is dishonst enough to read him the O-level paper (whereas he'd have known Nick was joking and not hung up), and the moment she covers up her own diving failure in Cricket Term by pretending she dived badly on purpose so that Monica would win. I mean, AF seems to agree with Mr Merrick's account of her as the Lady of Shalott, potentially spoiled, and morally wavery or neutral.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Ok - I guess I see some of what you are saying. But I still think a bit of stroppiness/occasional social awkwardness is pretty normal for a teenager. And that although the dishonesty is more serious - and not something Patrick would do - it seems a bit much to condemn her virtually for life for a teenage mistake committed when she was feeling vulnerable. I am still not quite sure that even AF would want to do that - but maybe I do not quite understand her moral absolutes. I am pretty sure that Madame Orly is interested in Ginty because of the probability of the good marriage.

[bluebellbicycle.livejournal.com]

I like Patrick (see icon! lol) but I have never thought of him as honest. I find his morals throughout the series fairly ambiguous, and they bend according to the situation he finds himself in. He does have a strong faith, or at least he talks a lot about it (there is the scene in Run Away Home where he is praying alone though, I acknowledge that) but his actions aren't always the most truthful or honest. In many ways (in this way) he and Ginty are perfectly matched.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure why you think that Patrick is not honest or truthful because, irritating though he can be, I always thought he was pretty much the moral centre of the books for AF - and she shared his particular form of Catholic faith, with the dislike of Vatican 11 and only attending the Latin Mass. No one in the books is perfect, but I think that Patrick was always presented as having a basic honesty. I realize that his closeness to Ginty is to some extent at the expense of Nicola, but his behaviour to her indicates friendship, not a romantic relationship and they stay friends, if less close (eg beginning of Attic Term). There are hints that Patrick and Nicola's friendship might have eventually developed into something more in Run Away Home but we are not really told.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't ever condemn her for the Lambert gaffe. I still don't properly understand what it was about - but then, I've never been a master of tact. Certainly there's no way Ginty could know about Mrs. Lambert's touchiness about large families.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I can easily forgive the odd lack of tact - maybe partly why I have some sympathy for Ginty. Maybe I have been obsessing a little about AF since finding this community, and should read some nice liberal authors. I think she is an interesting writer though, and some of the tribute fiction to her is brilliant.

[(Anonymous)]

Ginty says something about people with large families making up for those who don't have children. Presumably it's an issue with Mrs Lambert that she doesn't have any, we don't know details, but maybe she wanted to and couldn't, or even perhaps lost a child.

[dunite.livejournal.com]

Um, I'm not sure that Nicola means this about Marie. For example, if it had been Pomona, or even Lois, Nicola would have felt shocked and perhaps a little sorrowful. Nicola had never been able to understand Marie or her motivations, and couldn't understand how Marie could have lied so easily at the Court of Honour. From that viewpoint it would have been very easy for her to assume that, because of that, Marie would automatically tell authority about the netball switch (which she didn't), and always take the easiest way out. Again, Miss Redmond or Miss Craven mention that Marie is "far too eager to please", which suggests that she's given to doing what might be most expedient, rather than what's right. That would very irritating to Nicola.

I think that when Nicola mentions that if someone dies she'd "rather be properly sorry", she means that it is easier to grieve when there is genuine loss. She never particularly liked Marie, and so doesn't feel any particular bereavement at her death. The suddenness of it, too, was shocking. Mind you, Lawrie's reaction is even more extreme than Nicola's, but it stems from shying away from any unpleasantness such as death ("that woffle"), and Lawrie's own egotism that can't sympathise at all with anyone she dislikes. At least Nicola does actually have qualms of conscience about the way they treat Marie, even if she doesn't go to the extent of wanting to make friends with her.

Again, about Miranda, she does explain why she stopped being friends with the red-haired girl (Sandra?) - she was attracted by an appearance that turned out not to be reflected in reality. And although that initial attraction is very superficial, I see it as quite realistic.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Marie's actions are not ideal, but could easily be explained by the fact that she is excluded and quite frankly bullied, and the fact that Nicola does nothing about this does say something about her to me. I guess ultimately, like Kathy in The Thursday Kidnapping, she just doesn't have Marlow coolness, but AF is very harsh in the way this is depicted. No one of Miranda's intelligence could seriously believe that red hair necessarily says something special about someone - she just likes to show her social power by changing friend according to appearance until Nicola - maybe this is realistic, but I still see it as worse than Ginty changing her mind about blood sports. Possibly AF can be too bleak a writer for me.

Ginty

[dunite.livejournal.com]

Some interesting comments from you all about Ginty. I agree with smellingbottle about her insecurity, and her need not to be alone. She's actually a fairly typical modern teenager, but perhaps she wouldn't have been quite so much in the days when AF was first writing about her. I think that Ginty finds it easier to pretend that things are so, rather than looking at things as they are. In this situation, the desire to Gondal is of a piece with her friendship with Unity Logan: AF doesn't suggest, for example, that the events of TMATT really affected Ginty in a long-lasting way, more that she was pretending to herself and to Unity that those events had affected her. The experience would have been intense: she was the eldest, responsible, very scared, and also sidelined somewhat by Peter's absurd would-be heroism. However, I also understand why her parents are concerned (in FL) about her failure to put that time behind her, and rightly concerned about Unity's part in this. I think it's perfectly natural for her to realise suddenly that she can't go on pretending, and so channels her outlets into things she was previously interested in. There are hints of this earlier in FL which suggest that Ginty can't always pretend to a sad, sweet sorrow.

My thoughts about Mme Orly approving her evidently stem from her good looks and general presentability. Plus Ginty actually likes the presents that their grandmother sends, and seems quite at home in Mme Orly's world. The children presumably pick up on the tension that exists between their mother and grandmother, and Ginty is the only one who appears to appreciate that their grandmother may have things to offer that their mother doesn't. Glamour, pleasure, dances, sophisticated Paris, that kind of thing.

While I don't think that most of the Marlows would fit comfortably into a modern school, they aren't untypical characters for post-war school fiction. Most successful girls in school fiction are both brainy or hard-working and sporty (or at least are tryers).

[bluebellbicycle.livejournal.com]

I agree with what smellingbottle said above in her first post about Ginty's character. Ginty to me is flighty and lacks a certain substance that the other Marlows have. Even Ann, who AF really didn't like, is strong and constant in her faith. I find it irritating the way that Ginty first declares herself anti-bloodsport and then turns completely around on it, for the next book. She doesn't seem to have any conviction of her own. Neither does she show much attention or consideration for what is going on around her - eg Nicola's relationship with Patrick. Ginty doesn't know or care that she is stomping into Nicola's territory as it were. Patrick, of course, is mostly to blame for this - which brings me around to what I was going to post above. Since when is Patrick straightforward and honest?

Regarding Ginty as a name - the McGinty and Ginty surnames are pronounced with a hard G, and Ginty Marlow is pronounced Jinty. I'm pretty sure Jinty crops up as a name in Oxenham? The addition of a -tee sound as diminuitive isn't all that unusual. I find other Marlow names much more exotic - such as Rowan and Lawrence.

[(Anonymous)]

Oxenham's Jinty is short for Janet - she's a Scot. Can't think of any others